If not, let me tell you a little bit about it. For $99 a year, you pay for two-day shipping on all Amazon products.

Brilliant marketing, really. For them, not us.

See, it’s psychological. You pay once, but then you get “free” two-day shipping. Only it’s not free, remember. You paid for it.

Anyway, there are benefits to an Amazon Prime membership, other than “free” shipping. There’s the lending library, where people can share Kindle books. You get one free share a month, which is how I read Hunger Games, and how I’d like to read The Fault in Our Stars. There’s also the Amazon movie/TV show queue, which looks a lot like Netflix, but has some shows that aren’t on Netflix.

Introducing Prime Music

Now, because maybe they haven’t been using enough of the internet’s bandwidth, they have a streaming music section.

I’ve been trying it out, and so far, I really like it.

It’s a little different, in that they give you playlists, but not just playlists.

They give you the chance to add playlists to your music library.

So it’s like actually having the mp3s on your computer, only you don’t have to have space for them. Also you don’t have to pay for them.

Why Amazon is Smart

Brent and I both have Amazon prime. Prime is connected to our email addresses, and neither one of us wants to give up the things associated with our email addresses. It would mean that one of us would have to “give up” the Kindle titles we bought before we knew each other.

And we’re not ready to do that yet.

Silly, right?

But again, good for Amazon.

Are you an Amazon prime member? Do you think we’re ridiculous for spending $200 a year on “free shipping” and books and music?

I have been hearing a lot about the new Amazon Prime music, but haven’ t had a chance to check it out. Did you know that if you have a .edu email address, you can sign up for Amazon Prime at half the cost? I don’t know how I feel about $100 per year for prime, but for $50, you bet I’m there!